The Ballad Of Bonky Demo: Bonkers

The Ballad of Bonky wasn’t the last game I played during The Big Adventure Event, but I forgot to edit the post, so adding this as my last bit of ‘coverage’. The last game, which is highly recommended, was Best Month Ever!

I loooooove stop-motion using a clay-based medium, but other than Ultra Strangeness and the upcoming Visceratum, there haven’t been that many games that have been able to nail it. Even the almighty Clayfighter aged worse than an open bottle of lukewarm milk wrapped in a UFC fighter’s jockstrap. 

The Ballad of Bonky is very simple in its design, but I don’t doubt for a second that it took an age to get it to this demo stage. You play the lead character, who is accompanied by his pal Puncho. Bonky believes he’s seen an alien, and on that whim, enters an ominous location to validate his suspicions.

It’s somewhat ‘out there’ in its approach, and I really liked it. Even as a fully-fledged grown-up, I still enjoy watching the likes of Mio Mao, so this was a no-brainer on that part. Besides the clay-like medium, the characters and interactions are pretty good fun too, and there features a handful of cutscenes in The Ballad of Bonky that ‘had me at hello’.

Now, take this with a pinch of salt as I’m sure it was my system, but I was plagued with frame drops throughout. It’s not something I often encounter, but here it often spoiled the experience, and you need some stability based on gameplay. 

The ‘bonk’ in Guy Unger, cobcris and knutsel’s title isn’t the same bumping uglies as it was known as when we were kids; it’s the bonky bit from clubbing enemies with a baseball bat. Bonky has to time attacks to bash the villains as they ricochet faster into walls and what-not. It’s mostly a top-down perspective and reminded me of TMNT on the NES.

Though we have some loveable characters and family-friendly visuals in The Ballad of Bonky, the difficulty level can be testing. Attacking enemies is easy enough and flows at a comfortable pace. Unfortunately, The Ballad of Bonky is a one-hit affair; get bashed by an enemy, and you have to restart from a checkpoint. They aren’t exactly far apart, but it sucks having to repeat a section due to a slight mistake.

Bonky can find a buff that gives him an extra life, and there are some collectables like burgers and bolts – clearly, the two pair well – but the demo is a relatively brief affair to showcase what to expect come release date.

The Ballad of Bonky is hardly divisive, but it’s unlikely to blow people away at the same time. For me, it’s a standout as I enjoyed the repetition, cute visuals and humour, though I would have liked a health bar instead of the one-hit-kill. It’s tricky to recommend to the masses, but for my selfish motivations, i.e. I like it, it’s obviously on my Steam wishlist.